


We Have All the Stars

by Deifire



Series: Eerie Advent Calendar Challenge [13]
Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: Christmas, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 12:23:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5416967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deifire/pseuds/Deifire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"It’s just at times like this, when I realize I’m spending Christmas Day on the run through time and space from an alien civilization with a bad habit of destroying entire worlds, I wish I’d taken a moment to appreciate how normal our lives back in Eerie really were..."</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Have All the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Eerie Advent Calendar fic challenge.
> 
> Prompt: Hang a shining star.

_Somewhere in time and space_  
_The near future (from a certain point of view)_

They’ve stopped.

Dash pulls himself fully into consciousness and opens his eyes. He’s not sure where or when they are. Through the window in front of him, all he can see are stars. He can’t tell anything about them, save they’re not the stars he’d be seeing above him if he were still in Indiana. 

As far as he can remember, he’s never been anywhere else long enough to get familiar with what the night sky is supposed to look like.

He glances to his left, and there’s Marshall sitting in the driver’s seat, looking pensive and exhausted.

“Teller?” he asks, hoping the answer to the unspoken question of why they’ve downshifted into solid reality and are no longer moving is that Marshall just needs a rest. It’s been a day that involved barely preventing a solar system from being destroyed, and he’s too tired to be sure he can deal with anything else going wrong right now.

He’s unprepared when Marshall looks over at him, smiles, and says, “It’s Christmas.”

“What?” Dash asks. 

“Christmas. On the prime timeline, Eerie time, it’s,” Marshall glances down at his wrist, “December 25, exactly 12:06 a.m. See?”

He holds out his wrist to Dash. Dash isn’t sure when Marshall first picked up the habit of wearing multiple wristwatches, each keeping track of the exact time in a different location in the multiverse. Dash has tried pointing out that it looks ridiculous and isn’t even useful information, but this is not the sort of logic that has ever swayed Marshall Teller from doing anything in his whole life, so the watches remain.

“Okay,” Dash agrees. He starts to close his eyes again, relieved it's nothing, thinking maybe he can get a few more hours of sleep. "We should get going soon."

But Marshall continues. “If we were home right now, we’d have presents in a few hours. And hot chocolate, and dad’s experimental sugar cookies. We’d have a tree, with the shining star mom got from grandma at the top of it. Simon would be insisting on taking over Christmas dinner prep for the good of everyone, and at least one of Syndi’s kids would have tried to rig a camera to take a picture of Santa, and discovered that despite the advances in technology over the years, it always seems to fail on Christmas Eve.”

There’s a long pause.

“We have stars,” Dash says at last, looking out into the void, and then back at Marshall. “We have all the stars.”

“Yeah,” says Marshall, absently. Then, “Sorry. It’s just at times like this, when I realize I’m spending Christmas Day on the run through time and space from an alien civilization with a bad habit of destroying entire worlds, I wish I’d taken a moment to appreciate how normal our lives back in Eerie really were.”

And Dash looks away. Because it’s at times like these that he’s reminded just how much Marshall has given up for him. Unlike Dash, Marshall had a real life once, with memories, a home where he belonged, and a family who loved him. He’d walked away from all of it. As much as Dash tries to tell himself Marshall had done it for the chance to explore and satisfy just some of his near-insatiable curiosity, he knows better. Marshall had been made that offer more than once before under far less dangerous circumstances, and had always turned it down.

Until Dash needed him.

Then he’d come along without hesitation. Dash has long ago realized there’s nothing he can do short of destroying Marshall completely that would ever hurt him enough to make him leave, either. It’s an awesome responsibility. He wishes all the years they’ve been together had taught him how to handle it better.

For now, he forces himself to meet Marshall’s eyes and smile back at him. “Merry Christmas, Slick,” he says.

“I love you,” Marshall responds.

Dash startles. He doesn’t mean to, and he’s worried it comes across as a visible flinch, but that’s not the reply he’s expecting. Banter or maybe an insult is closer to the way their relationship is supposed to work. He briefly considers accusing Marshall of going off script, using those exact words for the reaction he knows it will provoke, to get the conversation back on a more familiar track.

Instead he stands up, wipes the sleep from his eyes, and says, “Okay, my turn to drive. You’re obviously tired, and need a break before you accidentally materialize this thing in three different decades at once.”

“That happened one time…” Marshall starts to protest, but allows himself to be pulled from the driver’s seat of their strange vehicle. It doesn’t have a permanent size or appearance, and has a habit of assuming whatever shape its operator finds most terrifying, which means what it becomes in Eerie is a little embarrassing, if you don’t know any better.

Dash settles Marshall into the passenger seat, then takes the controls. He shifts up, and the stars fade as they break contact with this plane of existence.

Marshall’s asleep, or at least feigning it, now. Dash is going to have to see what he can do about a Christmas present of some sort before he wakes up again.

For now, though, they have to keep running.


End file.
